Increasing Practical Lessons and Inclusion of Applied Examples to Motivate University Students during Programming Courses

Abstract This study investigated the influence of increasing practice and the inclusion of applied examples (exercises with a direct application or related to real problems) during programming and numerical analysis courses. The results obtained from this experiment demonstrated that examples related to students engineering careers have a very positive impact on learning and awaked up the student interest on programming courses; in comparison with students who just follow examples from a textbook as in an ordinary course. The conclusions of this work were obtained from the analysis and comparison of the statistical information of the students’ performance during 2 programming courses and an additional mathematical course (numerical analysis). Finally, a questionnaire (at the end of the courses) about the methods used for teaching was applied in order to investigate students’ opinion.

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